My 8yo son's second set of locks...

My 8 yo son decided that he wanted his hair locked again. He's been loving mine, his best friend is growing her hair out to begin locking and, well, we live in a place where dreads are a common sight. He had them when he was 6yo, but I didn't know enough about it and thought that I had to palm-roll everyday. He hated it and cut them off :*(This time I gave him the choice of going straight neglect or starting with a little mama-gentle back-combing. He thought about it for a week and decided that he wanted me to start them with combing and then neglect them.He's such a cool little kid. My almost 4yo daughter is asking for them now, but I had to tell her no :*( because her ballet school requires uniform hair and ballet is her true love. It's okay though, cause she loves for me to do all kinds of crazy hairstyles for her on non-ballet days.Here he is after 2/3 installed today reading The Lorax to his sister

And also very lucky to be in an area where dreads are commonplace... oh what I would give for that!I have a 4 yr old who has dreads as well, and hers look better than mine! xDI've been in many places from one end of the country to the other, but I've never had so much discrimination for both me AND my daughter as I have in my current town. I think they would actually be more accepting if my daughter had a shaved head than a dreaded head here, lol...

Wow, that sucks. Where are you? We're in Taos, NM. I worry sometimes that he'll have trouble when we travel, but we talk about that sort of thing a lot. One of the reasons we took the kids on the road was to show them the amazing diversity in culture in our own country. Sometimes I think we get a little too comfortable in this hippie-enlightened bubble that Taos seems to be. It's so expected for a person to be totally themselves here. Hoping it makes my kids more grounded in themselves so that when they do face the ugly out there it doesn't cause them so much pain as it always caused me as a child.I grew up in a mill town in Wisconsin. It was a brutal place to be a pale, freckled, poor, redheaded kid.

Mandy said:

And also very lucky to be in an area where dreads are commonplace... oh what I would give for that!

I have a 4 yr old who has dreads as well, and hers look better than mine! xDI've been in many places from one end of the country to the other, but I've never had so much discrimination for both me AND my daughter as I have in my current town. I think they would actually be more accepting if my daughter had a shaved head than a dreaded head here, lol...